


Red...

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Caranthir is still Caranthir, Discussions of past violence, M/M, Mild Language, Post-Canon, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caranthir keeps only the red in redemption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red...

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt: Caranthir leaves the Halls and Aegnor (his former lover) is waiting for him.

Their first meeting after Caranthir's re-embodiment wasn't what Aegnor would have hoped for. He had been yearning to meet his cousin again, after a fleeting encounter in the Halls before he had been allowed to leave, but the Valar had warned that Caranthir's release would be long delayed, and in the intervening thousands of years he had his family and friends. When it finally happened, Aegnor didn't even have the time to prepare himself for it – the news of Caranthir's re-embodiment were delivered to Tirion when Caranthir was already on his way there. 

He came back, adjudged to have expiated his sins, but not changed in mind, or in mood. He came back, but didn't return.

He bypassed Valmar and Aulë's Halls. He didn't seek his mother. Their relationship hadn't been affectionate to begin with, and then a virulent separation, slowly nurtured, had torn it to a heap of shreds that allowed no mending. Caranthir's place wasn't with her. 

He had no place in Tirion, either. His house no longer existed. His own rooms in the palace had been emptied and redecorated long before. All vestiges of his (and his family's) existence – trifling personal belongings and hurtful public reminders – had been obliterated. The only place where he had been allowed to tarry was in written words, or tales, enacting manifold lives he never lived.

He also happened to be the first of his family to be re-embodied, five ages of the world after he had died, and two whole ages after the last of the Eldar (but not the last Exiles) had left Middle-Earth. 

The news in themselves caused a sensation, an overspill of expectation and a resurgence of the slumbering rancour which drew everybody's attention to him. 

It wasn't therefore much of a surprise when, at the end of a tense encounter with the King and his family held behind prudently closed doors, he snapped.

He said he wouldn't apologise for crimes he had sufficiently paid for, and that he didn't want their goodwill.

Aegnor caught his eye from his place beside his father for a moment before he stormed out of the parlour (once a cosy reading room), under the alarmed gazes of befuddled attendants (most of them too young to know him), who parted to allow him passage like getting to close to him would have hurt them. Aegnor followed him, on the pretext of an anger that wasn't faked, ignoring his father's order to stop. He managed to overtake him in the hallway which led to the back of the palace, and the stables.

“You could attempt to compromise at least, now...for once,” he blurted, forcing Caranthir to stop by grabbing his arm. Two servants hastened past them, though the surreptitious glance they darted in their direction betrayed their curiosity. 

Aegnor had to battle with a gut-wrenching feeling, a queasy confusion which replaced his initial hopefulness. He couldn't fathom why Caranthir would want to make things difficult, why would he want to stir discord once again. 

But Caranthir didn't listen. 

“I have not come back to be made into the main attraction of a feel-good carousal for people who don't even use my Father's name any longer.”

Aegnor gazed ruefully into eyes he had missed – eyes which looked like a pool of black ink unless light reflected in them – looking for something he couldn't quite name. In the bright sunlight of the late afternoon, they were dotted with specks of reddish brown, reminding of black opals.

“They are more than justified in that,” he said, with a steely calm he didn't truly possess.

“And I am more than justified in not being thrilled by it,” Caranthir spat back, and yanked his arm free.

“...you _should_ wait. I know being re-embodied is hard. You will get used -”

“I've been lectured at length in Lórien. I know what is expected of me. Well, I can't meet those expectations.” He touched the spot where Aegnor had held him. His body was still an alien thing, and it hurt more than it ought to have. “I won't cause any trouble. Do not worry.”

That, in truth, he didn't. He asked Finarfin's leave to settle on his own in a remote location to the north of Tirion, removed from everybody, former enemies and friends alike. 

Aegnor tried to stop him, but he certainly wouldn't beg him, not even if he had thought begging could avail something.

“I will write to you, if you wish,” Caranthir said, as he took the reins of the pair of donkeys he had asked for to replace the horse he had received in Lórien.

Aegnor didn't reply.

And so Caranthir left Tirion, electing to live as a hermit, _hecil_ by choice and personal inclination. He left with a change of clothes generously provided by the royal household and a bag of tools. 

There was only one place he felt he could truly return to. A place where he could return to himself, too. 

It had been a solitary refuge for his father, at first, then a hide-out for him and his sons when coexistence with the rest of the family became unbearable and the best way to cope was eschewing it. A steep, wooded hilltop at the foot of the Pelóri. Not too far from Tirion, but inaccessible enough not to be visited by travellers or hunters. The landscape was mostly unchanged. The trees were new – young, vigorous ones – but he didn't remember their former distribution. The little brook still bubbled down a narrow vale on the side closest to the mountains. The rickety hut of course was gone, but as he dug to build a new one – and the longer it would take, the better – he found a corroded piece of metal. To anybody else it would have looked like a formless lump, but he knew what it was.

He didn't cry. In Beleriand, merely thinking of that one place had brought scalding tears to his eyes after his father's death. He collected all the other pieces he found in a basket made of entwined twigs, and when the hut was almost complete he attached them to the logs which supported the roof, as the only decoration it would ever receive. 

Several months passed before he sent the first message to Aegnor, the tengwar neatly carved into tender birch bark, and folded in half before he handed it over to a messenger crow. It was an easy trick. He left all sort of treats out for the bird, and the crow in exchange heeded his instructions. He had always had an affinity for crows and ravens. His father said it was because they were both blacker than black. 

The messages were laconical at first – one, two sentences at most that afforded a picture of his life as small, and as fragmentary, as the view from a keyhole. In time, he dropped more and more hints as to where exactly he resided.

Aegnor tried to pay them no heed, unwilling to concede anything, but the restlessness they provoked grew to be stronger than his resentment. He told himself he did it to talk things over with Caranthir, to bring everything that lay between them into the open. When he finally set out to find him, Caranthir had to come down from his abode to fetch him, after having spotted him blundering aimlessly in the bushes below.

They sat on a creaky bench just outside the hut.

Aegnor took deep breaths, strained by the bumpy ride up to the middle of the hill and then the trudging ascent on foot. He frowned. “This is...a goat's perch. Lonesome, and utterly inhospitable.”

“Tranquil,” corrected Caranthir, rubbing his left shoulder. “Nobody bothers me.” 

“You wanted me here.”

“It was up to you to decide whether to come or not. You seemed to be keen on keeping me with you a few years ago.”

Aegnor's reply was a noncommittal grunt. Caranthir chewed on a grass stem, completely at ease with his back rested against the wall of the hut and his bare feet planted firmly on the ground. There was much talk in Tirion of him, of how he fared on his own, of him dressed in rags and barely getting by. Caranthir wore a neat shirt dyed in all the colours of a spring meadow, and trousers made in the most exquisite lacework. It was still a far cry from what he could have had, and from what Aegnor himself would have wanted him to have.

“Are you _really_ content...like this?” he queried, gesturing towards the hut and the trees. 

“I can't imagine a better arrangement."

“You really don't miss your friends?” 

“That's what you expected me to say?” Caranthir asked in turn. He sounded genuinely (and candidly) surprised. “I do, sometimes, but not to the point of feeling like putting up with everything else. It'd be a counterproductive effort, anyway,” he went on, never one to mince his words, “...and I guess, if I tire of this life, I can just throw myself off a cliff, and spend the rest of eternity with Dad.” He spit the grass stem and reached for a wicker basket which stood next to the bench, retrieving raw fibres and a pair of carders from them. 

“You haven't even tried,” Aegnor scoffed. “I was rebuked by the Valar too, you know. I died irresponsibly, in their opinion. Apparently, turning the world upside down to get married is admirable, but dying in battle surrounded by orcs is reckless. ...and well, yes, I didn't care much about surviving, when I realised we couldn't win. But what benefit could I have gained from it? It surely didn't do you and your brothers any good.”

“I'm baffled they would reprimand one of your irreprehensible family.”

“Oh please. You know I wasn't particularly attached to the Valar...and still am not. It's _everything else_ you did I found issue with...and still do.” 

“I was never perfect.”

“There's a substantial difference between not being perfect and being a murderer. ...How does it feel to kill your own kin?” The question had tarried in Aegnor's mind for so long that uttering if felt almost like giving away a vulnerable part of himself, but Caranthir's obduracy had always pushed him to the limit.

To his dismay, Caranthir shrugged, without even looking up. “When someone with a weapon comes at you, it doesn't matter how closely related you may be. That counts for me as for those who killed me. But well, generally speaking....killing is like any other craft. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. The more you do it without any gain for all the trouble, the more killing itself becomes your goal,” he replied matter-of-factly, and perceived the prickling of Aegnor's insulted glare like a scratch upon his skin. “Don't look at me like that, you will have felt it too,” he added, his attention seemingly glued to the fluffy mass he was vigorously brushing. “The nettles are larger than they used to be. Ironic, isn't it? They make wonderful fibres. I've found bamboo too, recently, not far up the brook. Wasn't there before.”

The strident sound of the brushes scraping against each other became even louder to Aegnor's ears. He stared at Caranthir's hands. “What about your brothers?” he said, and he wasn't sure anymore if he truly wanted to know, or if he simply wanted to hurt Caranthir.

“Nelyo won't be allowed to return, they didn't tell you? His suicide wasn't justified, naturally. Curvo won't ever leave Father's side, and, fuck, I'd be upset if he did. Turco might choose return, if only to run. Pityo and Telvo too...perhaps. Though with one more kinslaying to atone for I guess they still have about three ages to go.”

“Is it true that Macalaurë is still...lost?”

“...yes. I've never met him in the Halls, at any rate, and there was no good reason for him not to want to meet me...I died in his arms.” Caranthir squeezed the combed fibres between his fingers. “No tear-jerking scenes for kinslayers in the tapestries. It wasn't too painful, and I think it was overall better than being stomped on by orcs.” 

“Better than being slaughtered in your own town over boats,” Aegnor gelidly remarked.

“Yeah, or suddenly see the person standing next to you being pushed into the water. Astarwë was a shepherd. He couldn't swim. He was still reckoned a kinslayer. The one who killed him was not.”

Aegnor balled his fists.

“I still think the ships were the only chance we had.”

“My grandfather would have given us -”

“He knew you were there. He didn't care.” 

“Stop!”

“True friend of the Valar, like his brother.”

“You-...You're shameless! How dare you insult -”

“What, so you can speak of Father as if he were some kind of freakish anomaly, and I can't say whatever I please of _your_ fucking family? I told you already, I don't give a damn about the tender balances of your sandcastle paradise.”

“It'd a paradise for you too if you stopped acting like this! If you just apologised!”

“I won't apologise, not even to you,” Caranthir snarled. He threw the brushes back into the basket, his temper grown too fierce to curb. “Apologies are meaningless, and forgiveness doesn't change the past -”

“Can't you really understand? What they want is to know that you regret visiting wanton suffering on them, and causing senseless destruction.”

“- what makes a difference is acceptance.” 

“Acceptance?” Aegnor echoed, disbelieving.

“I have accepted the import of my actions, that no matter how sorry I may be, I can't take them back. I'd be a hypocrite, too, if I went around making apologies, because in the same situation I'd do the same, because my conduct wasn't an extemporaneous incongruity. The Valar, and you by reflex, refuse to acknowledge this, and see it all as a snag in an otherwise perfect ordainment, caused by the 'folly' of a single individual, my Father. Misguided, insane -” Caranthir's expression became grim, and he spat the last word as if it were poison, “- marred.”

“He is.”

Caranthir's upper lip twitched. “If Father's marred then I am too. Here.” He stood up and took his shirt off. His chest was marked by many scars, among which a deep indentation in his left side stood out. “I asked to keep them. They're a part of who I am, of who I chose to be. My Father is a person whose decisions I approved and actively supported. That won't ever change. It would be better for you too to accept that.”

Aegnor sprang to his feet, infuriated by Caranthir's abrasive tone, and even more by the fact that he _still_ thought of his father ahead of everything and everyone else. He swung his balled fist towards his face. He punched him on the nose, hard enough to make Caranthir reel back and collide against the wall of the hut. Caranthir quickly regained his bearing, however, while Aegnor shook with rage, tugged on his hair and drew him into a kiss which hurt more than any blow he might have dealt. 

Aegnor left as soon as Caranthir let go of him, nearly tumbling down the slope in his fury.

He came back three days later, with a sack of wool and a jar of honey. Caranthir welcomed him without any apparent awkwardness, and he was glad for it. 

“There's a village up the vale, if you take the road which leads...northwest,” he mumbled. It was the direction of Formenos. “I think you could go there -”

“I don't want to cause them any trouble.”

“Surely if you had more items, more food -”

“I can make do. There's plenty to live on in the forests. Safer than the sea, and more generous.” 

“Don't.”

Aegnor didn't need to say more. Caranthir grinned and took the jar from him, going inside the hut to set it on a shelf next to a line up of wooden boxes. Then he went back outside, and turned his attention to the wool.

“Have I ever asked you to forgive me?” he asked, while he began undoing the rope on the sack.

Aegnor sat on the bench and sighed. “Please.” 

He didn't want to start arguing again, but Caranthir persisted.

“Have I?”

“...no, you haven't.”

“That's because it's fine for me if you're still angry at me. I would be angry at you if our situations were reversed. Besides, I don't think we can truly learn to live with each other again, so long as the Valar try to use whatever guilt we might have – or not – as fodder for their sick little games of guidance and...uh 'correction'.” He opened the sack, and sank his hands in the white mass. “Oh fuck, this softness and the smell...” he enthused, then dived into the wool face first. “This is top quality wool.”

“I just asked them to give me the best they had,” Aegnor said with a shrug.

Caranthir smiled. “Thank you.”

Caranthir's smile was a luxury all its own, and it looked even more enticing on his sunburnt face. The heat was greater at the heart of Valinor than it had been in the north of Beleriand, and Caranthir's pale skin didn't react well to it. His cheeks were red as raspberries. Aegnor felt a sudden, but not surprising, urge to kiss them. Their past relationship had been based almost exclusively on physical affinity. Caranthir had always maintained that the less the fëar were involved in lovers' affairs, the better. Aegnor had always suspected that it was more a way on Caranthir's part to mask the fact that the most significant emotional connections in his life were his father and brothers. But they weren't there now, not truly, and he was.

Caranthir looked up to be transfixed by Aegnor's craving stare. 

“I'm hungry,” Aegnor said.

“...I could misinterpret that.” 

“No, you couldn't. Because I mean it both ways.”

Caranthir snickered, and rose from where he was squatting to sit next to him. Very close, pressing their legs together. “Well, then I might have a couple special treats for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really believe any of the Fëanorians would ever be re-embodied, but this is how I envision it would go if it happened. 
> 
> Astarwë is my OC best friend of Caranthir's.
> 
>  _Hecil_ means "one lost or forsaken by friends, waif, outcast, outlaw".
> 
> The idea for the title (and summary), and in part the tone of the story, come from the song [RED...[em] by Dir en grey](http://memaizaka.tumblr.com/day/2015/03/31), whose title should be an incomplete 'redemption'.


End file.
